1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an arrangement for collecting and subsequently stitching folded sheet-like printed products. The method includes regularly feeding printed products to a conveying track. The arrangement has a plurality of supports for placing the printed products thereon, wherein the supports extend transversely of the conveying direction and are spaced apart in conveying direction, and wherein at least one feeder station is provided for the supports. A stitching apparatus is arranged in front of the end of the conveyor track.
2. Description of the Related Art
The above-described method can be carried out by means of a saddle stitcher disclosed in CH-A-667 62 1. This saddle stitcher is constructed with feeder stations which are driven in the machine cycle. The feeder stations are positioned along a plurality of collecting tracks which are arranged parallel to each other. The printed products are placed on top of each other on the collecting tracks and are subsequently pushed in a stepwise fashion by drive members on the collecting tracks against a stitching apparatus. In a special embodiment of this known saddle stitcher, the collecting tracks which are successively fed with printed products from the feeder stations are mounted so as to be axially symmetrically rotatable about an axis. The stitching apparatus following the feeder stations is located at the operating end of the collecting tracks and has at least one pair of stitching heads assigned to at least one collecting track.
An arrangement for collecting and stitching folded printed sheets disclosed in EP-A-03 99 317 also uses the above-described known principle.
While this principle makes it possible to provide an arrangement of compact construction, the functional clarity and control, as well as the accessibility, are impaired. In addition, a change in the production sequence requires a large amount of work.